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During the past four years Finlandia Trophy Espoo has attracted every year a new record audience to arrive to see the competition.

Inspiring event development: Finlandia Trophy Espoo

Finlandia Trophy is an international figure skating competition, organized yearly by the Finnish Figure Skating Association. Five years ago a decision was made to bring the competition to a completely new level. To reach this development target, a co-operation partner was found – city of Espoo. City of Espoo offered their support not only in terms of monetary sponsoring but most importantly also in terms of opening doors to local companies, universities, and into the world of music and arts.

"Integration of various stakeholders into the innovation process has proven to be successful. Participation of people that have earlier had nothing to do with figure skating has challenged the traditional thinking of organizing a competition in a very fresh way," says Laura Raitio, President of the Finnish Figure Skating Association.

The competition has now earned a position in Challenger Series of the International Skating Union and attracts world stars to compete in Espoo every year. During the past four years Finlandia Trophy Espoo has attracted every year a new record audience to arrive to see the competition.

Figure skating is the essential and central part of the competition still – innovation work obviously could not alter the competition rules. The focus of innovative work has been in bringing the audience experience to a level that there would be possibilities to interact with the skaters and support them towards great performances.

"For a competitor and judges we have wanted to offer a great start of the season, obviously a problem-free competition in terms of the organisation, but also some Finnish hospitality in terms of music, good food, and like this year: Finnish fans knitted Finlandia Trophy mittens to all competitors."

As a result of the past four competitions in Espoo, Finlandia Trophy is now known of the warm support from the audience to the skaters and great organization thanks to increasing amount of volunteer organizers.

"Skaters and audience know that every year there is something new, something different, that makes the experience such that they want to join the event. A positive spiral!"